Here is Skint's 1 Month Review for the Cotic Roadrat he won through the "Win A Custom Built Cotic Bike Worth Up To $5,500" Competition held on Vorb.
Kicked out of bed just after dawn by a beam of sunlight hitting me in the face. Stumble into bike gear still a little damp from yesterday’s ride. Grab a muesli bar and a fresh bottle and pull the Roadrat out of the garage.
Swing a leg over the top tube, clip in, and quickly accelerate across the short drive and out onto the quiet street. Good, nobody else has woken up yet.
End of the street and choice time. Left around the coast. Right into the Waitara back-country. Coast wins today.
Spin through dormant town, dodging bread trucks outside dairies, hopping curbs. Feel slightly guilty with each jump, as technically I’m on a road bike.
Open road now, cold numb fingers working the XTR lever and pushing the bike faster. Until this bike I’d only ever owned one bit of XTR – a rapid-rise rear derailleur on a Kona I bought from Tama years ago. It’s always been on dream bikes, and now I’ve got a dream bike, I’ll be buying more. Anyone know what a kidney is worth?
The single 44 tooth chain ring starts spinning out somewhere around 46k as I push down the first big downhill. The same ring forces me out of the saddle as I hit the climb on the other side.
Spin through Oakura, stop for photo of the giant surfboard, and further south to Okato. Turn away from the coast with a sharp left that takes me straight towards the mountain. Now the fun really starts.
It’s amazing where thoughts wander when you’re in a good long climb. Today they start with the 60 hour weeks I was working a couple of months ago in Wellington, the mad dashes to Makara in between work-related phone calls and weekend trips to the office, the countless times I ‘just popped in to send an email’ and got home after dark, having missed the ride.
Times have changed, in part thanks to the Roadrat.
Snapped back into consciousness by a milk tanker on what is now a narrow road, still climbing. My first mountain bike and my first road bike were both steel framed, but they didn’t handle anything like the Roadrat. The ride is hard to pinpoint in words. It’s point and shoot – aim where you want to go, make your legs go round, and suddenly you’re there and having to line up the next stretch of road, grinning and out of breath.
The handling? Precise, fast. Soft enough to make you forget you’re on a road bike. Hard enough to make you think you’re on a roadbike. Forgettable enough to be beautifully memorable. Fun.
I’m up in the Ranges now, surrounded by bush and nearing the top of the climb. The temperature has dropped, but my thighs are burning.
Now left through the best part of the ride – 3km of tight windy moss covered cambered back road. This is like tarmac singletrack. Nervous hell on a road bike, too slow to be enjoyed on a mountain bike. Perfect on the Roadrat.
Steaming ferns and rivers dumping melted snow blur past, as I throw the bike into one tight s-bend after another.
Too soon I’m spat out into green countryside with nothing but a stupid grin and a burning desire to do that again. Maybe tomorrow. I still have a job to go to.
From here it’s a 16k downhill to work – steep enough to spin out, but not so steep it’s over too soon. Shower. Coffee. Work. Home. Sleep. Do it all over again. |
